‘Hedwig’s’ spirited drag king

ONSTAGE, Wade McCollum -- squeezed into a tight black bustier and miniskirt -- is roaring through a rock ‘n’ roll number, triggering cheers that seem to rattle the walls of the 64-seat Celebration Theatre.

As the title character in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” the 26-year-old actor plays a self-styled rocker who was born Hansel in the old East Germany but, after a botched sex-change operation, exists in a neither-nor state between male and female. In concert, Hedwig -- “some slip of a girlyboy,” as she dryly describes herself -- seduces the audience even as she assaults it with her bitter tale of identity struggle and abandonment, told in defiant songs and wrenching spoken memories.

McCollum amplifies the gender confusion in John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s show by being so very masculine-looking. He is 6 feet, 2 inches tall, with well-sculpted limbs. Even an extravagantly curled Farrah Fawcett wig and an hour and 45 minutes of makeup application can do only so much to feminize him.

“Hedwig is that outsider, that freak, the one that’s different,” the actor says after the performance. “And everybody, I think, at some point feels like that outsider.”

A cult phenomenon in late-’90s New York, “Hedwig” lasted just a month and a half when first staged in Hollywood in 1999. It went on to become an indie favorite on film, however, and the production by the Celebration Theatre, playing since mid-April, has been extended through July 11.

Buzz about the show tends to focus on McCollum’s physical and vocal dexterity. He executes shimmying backbends that bring his upper half parallel to the floor, and he’s been known to jump onto the arms of a front-row seat to give its surprised occupant an extreme close-up of his bump-and-grind sensuality.

The spirit, McCollum says, is distilled from some of Hedwig’s proclaimed influences, including David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. The strength and flexibility come from the actor’s devotion to trapeze work and yoga.

McCollum had wiped away much of his makeup -- revealing ruggedly oblong, squared-off features -- before heading back into the auditorium and folding his lanky body into a seat. The character hasn’t left him entirely, though. Glittery eye shadow clings to his face, and the earthy-acidy smell of tomatoes (stuffed into his brassiere for padding, then smashed against his chest at the show’s climax) wafts from him.

The tomatoes can be “really uncomfortable,” McCollum confides, “on a freshly shaved chest.”

Another occupational hazard: his big, butterfly-size fake eyelashes. “If I sweat, all the chemicals that are on my face go in my eyes. I tear up, and then the eyelash glue gets all messed up and they start falling off. I’ve done whole shows with one eyelash on, one eyelash off.”

McCollum first portrayed Hedwig a couple of years ago in Portland, Ore. “I’d never done drag before. So it was a huge learning experience.”

The rock ‘n’ roll aspect of the role came more naturally. The actor’s father, Mike McCollum, is a rock drummer and songwriter who performed with a succession of almost but not quite famous bands.

From birth to age 5, young Wade and his mother, Sue Casavan, traveled with the bands, and the actor remembers being laid down and “slowly rock ‘n’ rolled to sleep. The sound of people dancing and having fun put me at rest.”

In Portland, McCollum began to generate some heat with his Hedwig as well as his title performance in the equally out-there musical “Bat Boy.” Hollywood showed sudden interest in him, and there was talk of a television pilot. The project fizzled, but McCollum headed to Los Angeles anyway.

The day he arrived, he saw a casting notice for Celebration’s “Hedwig.” “I was, like, ‘If that’s not a sign from the universe, I don’t know what is.’ ”

Director Derek Charles Livingston auditioned about 20 actors for the role and called back five before casting McCollum, who, he says, makes Hedwig “vulnerable, touching, dangerous, humorous.”

The script encourages performers to customize Hedwig’s between-song patter. In tailoring the show to L.A., McCollum and Livingston have worked in a number of knowing references to the city’s affectations (valet parking, Sky Bar) as well as such local sights as the transvestite hookers who work the street outside the theater. Livingston also has expanded the show to give Hedwig backup singers and fellow participants in the reenactment of her story.

“Hedwig is a highly intelligent being who has a war going on inside her,” McCollum explains. “It’s a binary war; it’s the war between polar opposites: man and woman, love and hate, light and dark. She is stuck in the extremities.

“We witness her, through the exorcising of these binary things, unify them and come to some kind of balanced conclusion, where she is both/and.”

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‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’

Where: Celebration Theatre, 7051-B Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood

When: Thursdays-Saturdays,

8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. No performance June 20.

Ends: July 11

Price: $25

Info: (323) 957-1884